I have a stockpile of old 1541 drives that my cousin gave me. The three that worked right off the bat are now rattling at me. Any software that can fix this?

I found a program called Headbanger or something to that effect that repeatedly rams the read head opposite to what misaligned it in the first place, but I'm frightened to try it because these drives are all I have.

Also got a tool called 1541 MASH that can aid me in tuning the heads manually, but every time I open up something and attempt to fix it... Let's just say I'm on my 8th modded Xbox because of "curiosity".

tl;dr SAVE ME
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Try the headbanger, if something is loose enough to move in one way it can move the opposite way as well.
Could be dirt transferring from the disk as well though, if things break when you open them perhaps it's better if you try and find a 5.25" cleaning disk than open it up and wipe the heads with alcohol.

I tried the headbanger on VICE to see what it would do. In short, it sent the read head INTO F***ING ORBIT. As someone who knows that 1541s read 35 tracks and have a 40 track head, I was a bit surprised and confused to see VICE's drive readout to say it was at track 42.

I'll type it out and give it a go on one of my 1541s, will report back with the findings.

If you're interested, here's the program I found.

Code:

0 REM REVERSE KNOCK YOUR DRIVE - STEPHEN CHEUNG 10 OPEN 15,8,15,"I" 20 SP=1:FORI=1 TO 100:GOSUB40:NEXT 30 FORI=1 TO 20:SP=-1:GOSUB40:NEXT:PRINT"ALL DONE!":PRINT#15,"I":CLOSE15:END 40 PRINT#15,"M-R"CHR$(0)CHR$(28):GET#15,A$:A=ASC(A$+CHR$(0)):BI=A AND 3 50 BI=BI+SP:BI=BI AND 3 60 R=(A AND 252) OR BI: PRINT#15,"M-W"CHR$(0)CHR$(28)CHR$(1)CHR$(R):RETURN

found that at http://home.comcast.net/~safeh.../1541.html , towards the bottom is a bunch of links to prg files, that's the only one that was text, and coincidentally, the first one that caught my eye.
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these kind of programs are generally completely useless - unless the r/w head somehow got stuck above track 42 (you can infact read up to track 42 on most 1541s).

simply cleaning the r/w head will in pretty much all cases give you much better results than anything these programs could possibly do.
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GOT IT TO WORK!

Got an early 1541 with the pull down drive. When I tried it first I couldn't even get it to LOAD"$". I loaded up the headbanger app on my 1571, switched to the 1541 and let 'er rip. So far so good, managed to get a game loaded up.

My 1541-II however isn't responding to treatment. We'll see how this pans out.

Thanks for your help e5frog, and groepaz, I'll be sure to source a head cleaning disk sometime.

On an unrelated side note, is it normal for 1541 motherboards to be warped?
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EDIT: Answered after reading Azgrope's comment.
I've read that it might help, the metal piece holding the head has been sliding a little and everything is pushed back by knocking in the other direction.

Don't think there's much information to get from running it in VICE, don't think it emulates the mechanics of the drive...

It would of course be better to check rotation speed of the drive, lube the rails if necessary and clean the head and then check the alignment in a proper manner.

If he doesn't want to open it up then a cleaning disk and headbanger is pretty much the only things that can be tried.


EDIT:
If the banger method worked it can be a good idea to open it and tighten the screw so it won't get loose again.

everytime someone pulls this "joke" i have to imagine how some poor american tries to say "gröp" and then something vaguely resembling "grope" comes out. funny indeed )
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Yep. We have the Dutch word for onion: 'ui' equally hard for Americans to pronounce...
They usually end up replacing it with a sound like the ou in mouse.

I have always thought groepaz was some American guy (no location written down, I'm from Sweden) and that the alias was "grope ass" intentionally disguised enough to be approved by the board.

I apologize for me making fun of it if it's actually your name/surname.

If my name was calksaker I'm sure that would seem funny to some people as well...


Anyway, chupa-chups, I mean chupathingy:
I don't have a 1541 myself, have a 1541-II and 1571 so I don't know if the boards are generally warped. It could have been warped since the components were soldered though or gotten that way because of heat afterwards. If it's working I'd leave it the way it is.

Also remember that 5.25" disks doesn't last forever, the magnetic traces fade over the years and the the actual surface may loosen from the disk leading to impossible or hard to load software (leaving debris on the read/write head).
I have heard it is good to re-record your magnetic media every ten years, which is of course difficult or impossible with some original media if you don't have special equipment.

If you can format a disk, save a file and load it back but it doesn't load other disk, that can be an alignment or speed problem. Ray has some more in depth information regarding problems and solutions:
http://personalpages.tds.net/~...ix1541.txt

[quote="e5frog"]

groepaz wrote:

Quote: ... its loosely related to the infamous [url=http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gröfaz]gröfaz[/url]. edit: hihi. stupid script cant handle umlaut in url it seems =) So "größter *what* aller Zeiten"? Phreak, poster...? Noticed now that I beat you by 0.02 points in the No Goto competition.

Alla tiders största fältherre.

rotfl =)
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